


sing for ourselves alone

by orphan_account



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Families that Are Wonky, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, M/M, No this is not based off of my life, Non-Linear Narrative, Richie's just... being He, Trans Richie Tozier, happy-ish ending, it be like that i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 11:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13293816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A look into Richie Tozier and the hereditary 'bad at communication' gene.





	sing for ourselves alone

**Author's Note:**

> hey! this is unbetaed and i wrote it in like an hour! im a shithead! im sorry!
> 
> Some notes/background if anyone's interested:
> 
> -Richie's mom is Lebanese/Egyptian, Richie's dad is the American Wentworth Tozier we all know and tolerate  
> -I think I made it clear the nature of this family but they're not like... abusive to Richie. They don't really understand each other because none of them communicate but they aren't bad people they're just very Emotionally Constipated. I hope I made that clear but I also want to note that Richie's an emo teen so he's pretty oblivious to what's going on with his parents besides the obvious. Lol this isn't about Richie's parents  
> -Ben's a trans girl! Stan's a trans dude! Richie's trans if I haven't been obvious about it!  
> -Some other things to take note of: this takes place in 2017? Just bc and title comes from the mountain goats transcendental youth

He gets $10.00 a week for the stuff he wants. Richie’s mom sighs and passive-aggressively prays for her child every time he comes home on a sugar high after ‘wasting’ all his money on Pixy Stix, but she doesn’t know Pixy Stix only cost $1.00. She also doesn’t know Richie is a boy. Which is fine, because Richie hasn’t told her.

Yeah, at first he used to blow all his money on candy (which he shared with his friends! He’s not an asshole) but then he started saving up. Until he had enough money to drag Stan to a thrift store and have him help pick out outfits, and have Eddie help him pick out a nice haircut at the barbershop.

He didn’t tell his mother, or his father, for that matter, about any of this (to the chagrin of Stan, who anxiously accepts it but tells him, ‘It’s better in the long run if you do it now!”). He just… starts wearing boys clothes. And his mother frowns a little at the Hawaiian shirts, hems and haws about where he got them from and if they’re clean, but she doesn’t take them away. He comes home one day with his hair chopped off and curls bouncing around his head. Richie’s father barely notices until his mother lets out an overdramatic gasp and asks why he would do this to her.

“Why?” His dad says, after doing a double take. “You had such pretty hair.”

“Well, Pops, I just felt like it. Needed a change! What’s the saying, ‘new year, new me?” He jokes in the face of his dad’s flat look.

“It’s July! Habibti, your hair is too thick to be so short. You never think things through-” Which is when Richie tunes her out. He knows she’ll rant about this and possibly ground him, which is the usual deal when he does this stuff. In the end, his mother only sends him sad looks across the dinner table for a week.

His mother isn’t wrong when she says he has thick hair, and that it’s unmanageable. But he refused to take a comb to it when he had long hair, and a nice haircut wasn’t the point. Eddie picked out the style that was most suited to his face and told him how proud he was of him. Even Stan, who had worried (still worries) about the consequences, and if he’ll be okay, delights in picking out a dark blue sweater, “for the winter, you can wear it with a button up under and everything. It was the first thing my parents got me- they say it makes you look more manly.” 

The point is that Richie wants to feel brave, like Mike is brave, like Stan is brave. He wants to live and feel okay in this shitty little town, without the weight of his hair always in the back of his mind. He doesn’t care about being… well put together or whatever.

*  
In true Richie fashion, he doesn’t tell any of the Losers what he is. Stan has always known, just like Richie has always known, (and there is comfort to be found in the fact that they have always understood each other, even when they didn’t understand themselves) and Eddie learned when Richie smacks a kiss on his cheek and says, in his squeaky voice, “Whaddya say Eds, wanna help pick a sexy haircut for your dashing knight in shining armor?” (Eddie’s quick on the uptake, despite Richie’s too-often cryptic way of revealing his feelings.)

Mike learns next, having been invited to dinner one day.

“My mom always gripes about how I hang around with too many white kids, so she’s gonna love you,” Richie says, unlocking the door.

“Ma-ma, Mike’s here!” He yells. “We’re gonna hang out in my room.”

From inside the house, an accented voice yells back, “Okay, just keep the door open!” Richie goes red then, muttering for Mike to come with him.

Richie’s room is what you would expect from him- messes with seemingly no order, clothes strewn all about, and tons of knick-knacks. There are a few posters, mostly 80s movies and retro bands, and some of Bill’s artwork pinned up. Mike spends a few moments admiring it, quiet as Richie bounces onto his bed.

Eventually, he sits down next to Richie, picking up a discarded Rubix cube and absentmindedly playing with it. “What was that all about?” Mike asks.

“Oh, the ‘keep the door open’ thing? Ma just thinks I’m a girl. Do you know how to yo-yo?” Richie says, to which Mike shakes his head no. He gasps and immediately starts showing him what to do. Mike doesn’t mention that he doesn’t seem to be very good either. He doesn’t ask for Richie to elaborate either, which seems to be a relief.

They spend the rest of the day watching shitty horror movies, Richie doing awful impressions of the actors and making sure Mike doesn’t get overly invested in the characters, as he is wont to do. Mike still yells at the screen and throws popcorn when the protagonist does something dumb, but not as often as usual.

It’s nearing sunset when Mike realizes he has to get home, and Richie’s mom offers to drive, but he takes his bike instead.

“I’ll call when I get home, okay?” Mike says on the front porch. “And uh, we support you and everything. I-I get it. I love you, Rich.”

“Aw, Mike, ya big lug! Come on, gimme a hug!” Richie says, dragging Mike in.

“Thanks,” Richie whispers. Mike ruffles his hair and ignores the tears in his eyes.

It goes in similar fashion, with the others. Ben’s next (and hoo boy, are there a lot of tears with that one. He offhandedly mentions how she’d look cool with long hair, and turns around to see Ben with tears in her eyes. He hurriedly tries to backtrack, but everything comes rushing out of her and that gets him crying a little bit, which is a weird surprise. It ends with the two of them hugging for a ridiculously long time, like the stupid gays they are. He loves her.), then Bev, and finally Bill.

He loves his friends so much, it’s so gay.  
*  
And then he’s 16 and coming out to Stan’s parents before he comes out to his own.

He doesn’t know when the disconnect became so wide. But he thinks it starts when he hears his mother mumble to herself about how she wishes she had a daughter she understood, and when his dad starts to walk through their halls like he doesn’t recognize them. He worries about them, because they never seem to know how to talk. The two of them are skilled in passive aggressive looks across the table, emotional constipation (a term he made up) and avoiding each other in the same house, but it seems to Richie like they have never heard of communication.

He has no idea what he can do, so he does nothing. Stays out later, hides in his room more. Pretends not to hear the arguments they have at full volume downstairs (because his mama has no idea what volume control is, and his pops just follows mama), and runs to Stan’s parents. They’ve always been accepting, and he’s desperate for some semblance of that (some hope that even religious people, even people who aren’t white and American, can accept him).

So he comes out to them after he tags along with Stan to the synagogue one day. It’s like a practice run, with people who are sure to be kind to him. Stan’s mom tells him that he’s always welcome at their house, no matter what happens. His dad rests his hand on his shoulder, telling him ever-so-seriously that even if he is a pain in the ass, he’s as much a son to them as Stan is. The Uris family is fucking amazing.

(And there’s a side plot here, one where the whole time he and Eddie have been inching closer together. One where they’re always dragged back to each other no matter what. One where they turn 17 and it’s Eddie’s birthday and there’s synthpop playing because they’re both homos and huge stereotypes. It’s not either of their first kisses, but it’s the first that feels like home.

The other losers are there too, hollering at their stupid friends who finally got their shit together. They let it happen, because they both deserve it after Richie honked an air horn during Bill and Mike’s first kiss, and Eddie jumped onto Bev’s back after her and Ben’s first.

Eddie’s lips are so so soft, and his hands are in Richie’s hair and everything feels wonderful. He reaches up to run a hand through Eddie’s hair, which he’s started growing out and letting curl a little. They pull away, eventually, and they’re both beaming. Eddie’s grin is like the goddamn sun, and Jesus Christ he’s starting to sound like Ben, but at least he gets all the sonnets about Bev’s fiery red hair now.)

And then he’s 18, finally 18, in his last year of high school and his last year with his parents.

And he comes out. Richie knows it’s been a long time coming, what with… everything about him, but it’s still nerve-wracking. The outcome isn’t favorable, but he knew what was going to happen.

Stark, quiet indifference from his dad- a reminder that he has been far away from his old self for so long, and neither his mother nor Richie know what to do- and overdramatic, ridiculous tears from his mother. She doesn’t understand, which he anticipated. He knows she loves him, it just hurts to hear her talk about how she doesn’t know where she went wrong. It hurts to know she sees this as a mistake. But there’s- there’s time. There’s the rest of the school year, and then there’s college, where he’ll be at UCLA, and she might learn it once she understands, really understands, that this isn’t a phase. Distance makes the heart grow stronger or whatever, right?

For now, for the few months he has before all the Losers are spread out across the country, and before his parents either break the silence or stay weird, he’ll sit with his mother and her quiet laments as they carefully stuff grape leaves in their odd creaky home.

He has memories of the kisses Eddie will peck across his face, and the stupid jokes Bill would make that would somehow get him cracking up, and he has his other family. Which is enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> there should probably be some uhhhhhhh ITALICS in this fic but im lazy so . whatever
> 
> Some arab/language things:
> 
> habibti-my love, baby, etc. in arabic  
> stuffing grape leaves- my favorite arab dish/food in general is this RIDICULOUSLY hard dish called waraa' enak. its amazing.


End file.
